Swords, Rings and Wreckage
by ShadesxofxPurple
Summary: Ashe seems to be looking more and more to the wreckage of the Bahamut lately. AshexBalthier. Please R&R!


Disclaimer: It's not mine. Honestly, I get so bored with writing these things; is there really anyone dumb enough to think that I do own it?

Anyway, needless complaining over, I finished playing XII a couple of days ago, and I was struck with the inescapable urge to write something. I _love_ BalthierxAshe (even more than VaanxPenelo), and I really thought that the ending was so sad, even though nothing _bad_ happened per se... But it struck me that Ashe had spent the whole game talking about fighting for her freedom, but in the end she never really got it. She'll always be trapped in all her Queenly duties and everything. So anyway, this is for Ashe and Balthier, and my own imagination. Written to the tune of 'Kiss Me Goodbye'.

Oh yeah, just so you know, the only pairings in this fic are those mentioned above. There is _no_ LarsaxBasch in this, people! I'm sorry, but that's just wrong. Larsa's just being his usual, awesome, sensitive self, nothing more! so I'm sorry if it seems like it. ;-P

* * *

She seems to be looking to the wreckage of Bahamut more and more nowadays. She is not sure whether she does so for comfort, or forgiveness, or…

She lets her fingers rest gently on the railings of the balcony. She can feel the cold metal underneath her fingers and for a split second she imagines not hard steel but warm hands underneath hers.

How funny. Exactly three years to the day, and she is standing here again. She is wearing the same dress, even the same necklace that she wore when she last said goodbye. When Rasler went off to war, and never came back. His was a different kind of heroism.

She looks down at her hands, her face contorting into a frown. Expression, any kind of feeling comes to her with difficulty nowadays. She hasn't smiled in, oh, it feels like decades… but in fact, as she thinks about it, it might only be a year. She expects that she may at the coronation, though. Because if there is one thing that she has not yet lost, it is the love of her people, and for them she would give up the world. Heavens, she already has.

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_The maids looked after her with worried expressions, but she ignored them. She was with friends. Ignoring their calls of caution, she ventures into the ruins by herself, the ruins now overgrown with greenery__. Spreading vines adorned with delicate flowers span the dark abyss above her, and she shivers as she glances upward. A small blue gap is visible, hidden by the crumbling metal walkways and rusting control towers that rise up into the sky above. She picks her way delicately through the wreckage._

"_Hey, Ashe!"_

_She looks upwards at the voice, her face aching to pull itself into a smile… but somehow, she can't quite manage it._

"_My Lady," Basch's voice sounds strange, even with his helmet off, and she examines his newly shaven face closely before turning to the others. They are all there, even Larsa who stands respectfully at a distance, because of course Basch won't go anywhere without his young charge, and once, just this once, they dispense with the formalities because here, in the broken down wreck of the sky fortress, there is no-one to watch. It feels like home._

"_Basch." She replies, haltingly. It is hard to go on._

"_It's Galbranth now."_

"_So I heard." She wants so, so much to be happy for him, and she is, even though he has changed, he has changed so much that he is no longer her confidante, her one rock to lean on, even though he hasn't been for so many years… there was him, then there was Rasler, then there was Vossler and then there was… _

_Now, of course, she has no-one._

"_Vaan." She turns again, greeting each of them in turn. "Larsa. Penelo."_

_Penelo is standing next to Vaan, and Ashe glances down at their intertwined fingers for a second before she meets her comrades smiles. She is glad that some happiness has come of this, even if it was never hers. It was all to save Dalmasca after all, wasn't it? And Vaan and Penelo deserved Dalmasca more than anyone._

"_Well." Ashe says quietly and the group look at each other._

_They make their way inwards, out of the shadows and into the tiny patch of glowing sunlight that falls onto the long abandoned maintenance platform._

_The search and recovery team had found nothing. A tumble of spanners and bolts, a confused mess of mechanical instruments, an old abandoned platinum sword bent and twisted by the crash._

((((("My Lady, you are _not _using that thing in battle with Vayne!"

"I shall use what I wish, Basch! Anyway, Vaan went and sold all our best swords to get more gil to spend on technicks, as you very well know!" Ashe slammed her hands down upon the dashboard of the Strahl as she spoke for emphasis, only just missing what looked like a very forbidding red button. Fran gave her a look from the drivers' seat where she sat in Balthiers' place, piloting the Strahl across the desert to Rabanastre, and the Bahamut.

"My apologies Fran. Anyway, Basch, I don't see what other option we have! Either I use the sword or I fight Vayne with my bare hands! And that's final!"

Basch was silent, but Ashe knew that he wasn't happy with her decision. Huffing in annoyance, she stood up abruptly and turned to leave the cockpit, but her way was soon blocked by a rather formidable-looking (sans earrings) sky pirate.

"Balthier, I'm _trying_ to get through the door."

"And I'm _trying_ to get into my cockpit." His uncanny imitation of her voice made her unconsciously check to see whether he had that… communicator… thing, hidden behind his back.

"I don't have it with me. Call it a sky pirate skill." He raised an eyebrow down at her.

"Yes, and we all know how those wonderful 'skills' helped us before," Ashe muttered sarcastically.

"Sarcasm! I'm impressed!" Balthier lowered his voice. "Another essential skill for sky pirating… although, it could just be that I'm getting to know you too well, Princess."

Ashe started to protest, but stopped when she felt him force something heavy into her hand.

"Balthier, I…"

"Now you be a good Princess, and take this. We can't have our future Queen dying on us in close-quartered battle, can we now?" He looked at her closely, and Ashe shrank inwardly upon his scrutiny.

"But… my sword…"

"I'll take the sword, don't you worry. I'll give it back afterwards, I promise!"

And without another word, Balthier set her aside and sauntered into the drivers' seat, leaving her standing there mutely, staring down at the recently-polished gun in her hands.

"That's two you owe me now, pirate." Ashe whispered to herself.)))))

_They found the sword… That _damned_ sword. They found the sword, but they didn't find _him_. And it hurt; she wasn't going to deny that now, that it hurt like hell was freezing over and taking all the memories of Rasler and her father and her brothers and Vossler out of her head and replacing them with _him_ every second of every day for the past five months… And the rest of her life too, no doubt._

_Ashe looks down upon the scarred and battered floor of the platform that they're standing upon, and suddenly she can't bear the fact that he might have stood here, that he might have heard her screaming for him seconds before he couldn't hear anything anymore, not ever... She chokes back tears like she did the day that Bahamut crashed, and tries to look anywhere but at the wreckage surrounding her; she looks at Vaan and Penelo, still holding hands. Penelo is crying freely now, and Vaans' free hand is stroking his friends' (maybe more than just a 'friend') hand. Larsa has walked up and is standing a little behind and to the side of Basch, who looks so much like his brother, and as she watches he reaches out a small, gloved hand and touches his protectors armguard, and as she watches she suddenly feels so, horribly alone. She misses the old Basch terribly, she misses her father and Rasler and Vossler, she misses their adventures and Vaan being an idiot and Penelo's laughter and she misses _him_so much that she can't even remember why._

_Still trying not to think, she turns away and begins to pick her way back. She can dimly hear Vaan and Penelo calling after her, and then Basch's deep tones faintly explaining that she is Queen now, and she must have duties to get back to, and the truth is that she does… But what she needs more is to get out of this beautiful, terrible, monstrously sad structure right _now_, before she becomes so lost that she can never find her way out. Because Dalmasca needs a Queen, and that Queen has to be her and she knows that if she spends another second in this place then she will never want to go back. She would stay a hermit here forever, gazing up at that little patch of blue sky until she grew old and wrinkly and lay down… finally… to rest next to where he slept. But she has duties, and her people need her, so she clambers out of the Bahamut in a manner most unbecoming of a Queen, and her maids look scandalised, but although she isn't smiling, she isn't crying either, and she knows that she has a conference this afternoon, so she submits to their fussing attentions and travels meekly back up to the castle to (maybe) start her life again, and she tries desperately to forget again._

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

She could never forget, of course. Seven months later… seven months of treaty-signings and conferences and meetings and dances and masques and people that she would rather never see again in her life, and she still hasn't forgotten. She still looks to the Bahamut every morning, and every evening, and she still can't quite figure out why. And today she is wearing Raslers' dress and Raslers' necklaces, and somehow it feels like she has come full circle and she is back three years ago when none of this had happened, and she tears her gaze away from the Bahamut and into the clear blue sky, and tries to remember what that felt like.

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Three days later, and a message arrives from Vaan. She is in a meeting at the time so she cannot read it straight away, but she goes up to her room afterwards, making a pretence of tiredness so that she can read it because she would never admit it but she has come to rely on these letters from Vaan and Penelo, and occasionally Basch (although his spelling is simply dreadful) because they are all that she has to remind her of that golden time spent under the stars when she was afraid for her life at every moment and yet so incredibly happy compared to what she is now, although she is content enough of course because she has her country and her people, and that's all she ever wanted. But maybe it was because _he_ was there, or because the memory of that time is slowly disappearing under a mountain of paperwork and state jewellery that she sometimes feels that the letters do nothing more or less than remind her of who she really is, not who she has to be.

So she opens the note, and she reads it, and she tips the ring out into her hand. And she reads the note again.

And for a second she cannot breathe, and the thin slip of paper flutters gently to the floor, followed by the ring, which chimes prettily as it hits the stone, and she reaches up and grasps at her necklace tightly (for she is wearing it again, and his dress), and she holds onto it for a long time, a longer time than she count, as if it is her only rock in the storm of emotion that now threatens (for the first time in a year) to overwhelm her, and finally, _finally_ Ashe can truly _feel_ again… And yet instead of the anger that she expected when she saw the ring she feels strangely light; she kneels down and picks up the piece of paper and the small circle of metal (how silly it is for it to be so small and so worthless and yet so important to her) and she looks at them both again, held loosely in her hands, and she knows instantly which one she values more.

And she smiles.

It doesn't matter that he's been gone a year. It doesn't matter that after all that time there's only this note, a scrawled message of hope delivered second hand by a street boy turned sky pirate. It doesn't matter… because she knows that he'll be back. He was a sky pirate, after all, despite being handsome, polite and devilishly honourable. She _knows_ that she'll see him again.

He'll want to apologise for the sword, for that stupid, stupid sword. For breaking his promise _("Because, Princess, when sky pirates make promises, which they _never_ do, they _always_ keep them.")._ And she might slap him, or shout at him a bit, just to teach him a lesson. But he'd know that she didn't really mean it. She'd found her something more valuable.

And it definitely wasn't an old, broken Platinum Sword that a certain sky pirate had bought for her on the Phon Coast, one golden day a year ago.

* * *

Yeah, so I was struck with a Tidus-like urge to not mention the leading mans name throughout the whole of the story. I kinda broke it in the flashback though, but oh well. Not quite done deciding whether Balthier was disastrously OOC in this one or not. I quite liked Ashe though, even though she was being a bit morbid. But anyway. 

Flames keep me warm at night. Constructive criticism and other comments keep me positively _glowing_.


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